Monday, January 16, 2012

Stayin' Put

This week was great! I got a new companion. His name is Elder Mariner. He is from Samoa and is so cool! He has been out 13 months and is a pretty sweet companion. I no longer have the Portuguese assignment but still have my 3 stakes. It is snowing now and we are supposed to get 2 to 4 inches by 5pm today (Monday) and then by 11pm it is supposed to drop down to 1 degrees with wind chill down to 15 below! Good thing I will be inside.

So this week we worked on finding investigators. We are trying to find as many new investigators that we can. We want to be able to share the gospel with an abundance of people and not have anyone left out. We are doing a pretty good job and we are tracking a little bit more. I like this because it forces me to open up a little more, talk to people, and forces me to not be scared. There isn’t a difference really between contacting a referral and tracting but for some reason when tracting I freeze up a little more. This week we found 2 new investigators and also put 2 more on date. So we should have 5 or 6 baptisms before the end of January. :) Woohoo! However, it isn't about the baptism though, it’s about helping them to make that promise with God that they will live by his teachings and do as he asks of them and in return, God promises to forgive us for our sins and be able to live eternally.

Our new investigator Bella, I think I told you about her last week, she is 12 and has been going to church with her cousin who comes up from Provo every Sunday to take her to church. She is so cool! We asked her to be baptized and she said yes and then her cousin said he didn't know when because her parents have to approve too since they aren't members. We have another lesson with her tonight.

This week while tracting I learned why you don't want to come across people who just want to bash our religion. It isn’t fun. This lady asked us to come in because she said she wasn't a member but believed in what we taught so she paid tithing. Ironic, I didn't fully believe her though, but I wanted to. She had us come in and talked for like half an hour going around in circles and didn’t believe anything we told her. She said that the day before she was on a plane and prayed and asked for some help in her life because of everything that was going on and I said "Well maybe that's why God sent us to you" and she told us no "you just go knock on everyone's door." I said "Well yes, but you were the 3rd door we knocked on." She still didn’t believe me and told me that "I don't believe in that kind of thing it wasn't fate that you knocked on my door it was because I live the 3rd door in on this building." She had some major concerns, including telling me that I didn't pray very often because I paused in the middle of it for like 4 seconds to think of how I wanted to phrase my next sentence. She was not the elect that we as missionaries are looking for and she isn't ready to receive the gospel into her own life.

Saturday we had a great lesson with this girl who told us when she knew it was true she would be baptized. We taught her about faith and how she can plant a seed in her heart and what she has to do to help it to grow and she was very receptive to what we had to say. She will be baptized in February I just know it.